Mayor: Let us turn Ekurhuleni into a livable city

Madame Speaker, Cllr Patricia Kumalo;
Chief Whip of Council; Cllr Robert Mashigo;
Members of the Mayoral Committee;
Leaders of Political Parties;
Honourable Councillors;
City Manager – Khaya Ngema;
Leaders of Business;
Leaders of the Labour Movement and Organs of Civil Society;
Members of the Media;
Residents of Ekurhuleni;

Yesterday was Heritage Day and it is my sincere hope that we all took time off to reflect on our history while imparting our knowledge to younger generations. As we continue laying the building blocks for a South Africa that belongs to all – that is non-sexist, non-racial, democratic and prosperous – we must always be mindful of the fact that we are following on the footsteps of giants like Chief Albert Luthuli, Oliver Tambo, Nelson Mandela, Govan Mbeki and many others. These were giants who sacrificed a lot for us to enjoy this beautiful country to the fullest.

After all, the past is a rich resource on which we can draw in order to make decisions for the future. It is the dictate of history to bring to the foe the kind of leaders who seize the moment, who cohere the wishes and aspirations of other people.

Madam Speaker

Our hearts go out to the many people who perished when a building belonging to the Synagogue Church of All Nations in Nigeria collapsed recently. We sympathise with many families who are still going through the motions as they try to identify and/or locate their loved ones who have not been seen since this disastrous incident.

It is also my sincere appeal to this august house to continuously pray for those sister African nations that have been hit by the deadly Ebola virus. Lately week in and week out we are flooded with news of more people dying as a result of this virus. From what I have read and seen this is an extremely painful way to die.

Fellow Councillors, the past few months have not been the easiest for us as we have been dealing with some power outages in some areas. Just when we were trying to get over this hangover, now we are dealing with a serious water challenge. Since the beginning of the week we have been communicating with various affected communities through special izimbizo in an effort to allay their fears and bring them up to speed on the situation. Our Communication and Customer Relations teams continue to utilize various communication platforms including the call centre, EMM website, customer care centres, and numerous media avenues like facebook, twitter, pamphlets, radio and newspapers as we pull all stops to ensure that our people are kept informed about the situation.

A quick update on this matter Madam Speaker is that the Ekurhuleni water shortage situation has improved with seven previously affected areas now receiving water. The situation has returned to normality in Benoni, Brakpan, Kempton Park, Germiston, Daveyton, Etwatwa and Tsakane. However, the same cannot be said about Bedfordview, Primrose and Tembisa. In the meantime our Water Department has been encouraged to increase the number of water tankers in these areas as we look for a resolution to the network problem.

As Rand Water and Ekurhuleni engineers continue to work around the clock to bring the situation back to normal, we wish to emphasize the call to residents to assist the process by using the available water sparingly.

Indeed our people have a right to be upset about the latest developments and the officials have been given a clear mandate that this is not acceptable and must be sorted out urgently.

Let me take this opportunity to apologise to all the affected residents for the inconvenience caused but also thank them for understanding the challenges we face.

Fellow Councillors

Government work is essentially a public activity. We should continually challenge the paradigm that government work is a secret activity that goes public from time to time. Rather, the approach should always be how to manage the flow of information in the interest of Ekurhuleni. Communication, Communication and more Communication is the way.

If we do not communicate, the people are left in a state of uncertainty which easily results in irrational decision making and behavior – thus leading to avoidable service delivery protests.
Our improved call centre has improved our communication with the community and as a result changed perceptions about the city and its levels of service delivery.

Madam Speaker, allow me to share the following recent statistics about the Call Centre:
* Waiting time has improved from more than 20 minutes to less than a minute;
* Abandonment rate of calls has improved from more than 80% to less than 10%.
* For the first time ever in the history of the call centre, the Municipality achieved both call waiting time and abandonment rate targets;
* All customer service requests are logged on EMIS irrespective of the origin; and
* The Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality Call Centre now handles in excess of 2500 calls a day.

Our intervention at the call centre has also resulted in a massive leap in opinion and community satisfaction levels graph according to the latest Gauteng City Region Observatory research results. Our people are becoming more and more satisfied and confident in our City.

Despite all this Madam Speaker, we are the first to acknowledge that there is still plenty of room for improvement. In this regard the City is now in the process of establishing a direct dedicated link for the call centre outside the existing bandwidth to enhance the facility’s response time. Our target is to complete this process within the next couple of weeks. As we strive for quality service at all times, we continue to have regular training for our agents on both customer care and telephone etiquette.

CRM is presently locked in with discussions with labour in an effort to increase the number of shifts at the call centre to cater for shorter working hours so that we minimize staff fatigue to further improve on the quality of service.

Fellow Councillors

The work of jacking up our call centre remains one of the main priorities of this Municipality. It is a process we shall continue to pursue until we get right. As we soldier on, we are now engaging on a Data cleansing drive to get correct contact numbers of our residents and stakeholders in order to increase the City’s communication channels via sms and social media platforms such Facebook and Twitter. We are further engaging cellphone service providers to get EMM residents contact details for proactive communication. All this will be done through due legal processes.

A system to deal with early detection and timeous mitigation of threats to services is already in place. In the month of October we will be embarking on a community communication program on citizenry education and active citizenry participation through urban management using local forums such as CPFs for hotspot identification to inform planning and budgeting going forward.

Ladies and Gentlemen

Let me take this opportunity to brag about our recent success in the Gauteng leg of the Bontle ke Botho Clean and Green Awards. The awards recognize sustainable environmental practices in communities including schools. It also looks at environmental initiatives that can assist in the fight against poverty and promote sustainable living practices.

Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality scooped the accolade as the cleanest and greenest city in Gauteng at an awards ceremony hosted by the Gauteng Department of Agriculture and Rural Development recently. This feat propels Ekurhuleni to represent the province at the Greenest Municipality Competition run by the National Department of Environmental Affairs later this year. This victory demonstrates that our interventions in environment management are on the right track.

Madam Speaker

We recently formalized our relationship with the Alfred Nzo and O.R Tambo district municipalities in the Eastern Cape. The whole idea for this development is to rekindle our Heritage by tracing the footsteps of one of our greatest leaders of all time – Oliver Reginald Tambo. We have agreed that by formalizing this relationship we are taking up the mammoth task of following in the footsteps of a giant who was a much disciplined revolutionary thinker, diplomat, humanist and mentor.

Our relationship will see us shape the lives of the people for the better. We have agreed to share skills and knowledge in various areas including HIV and Aids, community safety, service delivery in general and health.

Fellow Councillors,

The month of October, which we have declared the OR Tambo Month in this city is here. As a norm the Ekurhuleni Metro has put together a month-long programme that seeks to remind us as South Africans of the legacy of the man who left his mark everywhere he set foot and as he pursued the struggle for the liberation of this country.

I believe it is proper to wet your appetite about what we have in store for the people of South Africa this year. The programme kicks off with the Oliver and Adelaide Tambo Liberation Walk which will take place on the 4th of October at the Dries Niemandt Park in Kempton Park. Another major event will be the ever-flourishing Melting Pot Choral Music Festival on October 18th and 19th at the Carnival City Casino, and then the wreath laying ceremony at the Tamboville Cemetery on Monday October 27. In between these major events will be schools debate and an exhibition.

Closing our OR Tambo programme is a theatre tribute to Tambo to take place at Springs Theatre at the end of the month.

Madam Speaker, one of the highlights of this year’s O.R. Programme will be witnessed in the morning of the 18th of October just before the start of the choral festival, when over 800 choristers pay their respects to Tambo in the best way they know how. Another element of surprise is that we may have a very important special guest at this year’s festival. I will leave you guessing on this one.

Fellow Councillors

I believe we must give ourselves a big round of applause for the way we have escalated the Tambo Month programme as a city. Through our programme we have been able to lift the name of O.R. to another level – ensuring that his legacy is never forgotten. It is not surprising that structures like the National Heritage Council of SA, the SABC, ACSA and Europcar have come on board.

Madam Speaker, allow me to pay a little tribute to Tambo. Tambo led at great personal cost, the crusade that culminated in the evil system of apartheid being declared a crime against humanity at the United Nations General Assembly in 1966 in New York. His intellect, oratory skills and organizational acumen paved the way for a generation of diplomats that have ensured that South Africa does indeed occupy its rightful place on the global stage since the advent of our democracy in 1994.

O.R’s life was remarkable for the profound influence he had on the ANC during the difficult years of uncertainty, loneliness and homesickness while in exile. During his 50 years of political activity in the ANC, Cde O.R. as he would become affectionately known played a significant role in every key moment in the history of the liberation struggle. Among his accolades in the party are the following:
• Founding member and secretary of the ANC Youth League in 1944.
• General Secretary of the ANC from 1952.
• Mandated leader of the ANC’s Mission in Exile in 1960.
• President of the ANC from 1977 to 1990.
• National chairman of the ANC until his death in 1993.

Judging from this brief profile, it is clear that this man who spent 30 years in exile was actually an asset to all South Africans. His years of patient, strategic, people-to-people diplomacy during his years in exile eventually bore fruit. Societies and countries in the East and West, in Africa and the South, came together in a common cause to isolate apartheid.

Let me close this tribute with the following quote from Tambo himself, which captures what he stood for: “It is our responsibility to break the barriers of division and create a country where there will be neither whites nor blacks, just South Africans, free and united in diversity”.

Ladies and Gentlemen

The history of our country is characterized by brutal conquests of systematic dispossession of Africans from their land. This resulted in the establishment of townships throughout the country. As the population continues to grow in these townships, more and more of our people are becoming landless hence the escalation of backyard dwellings. Issues of poverty, under-development and landlessness are some of the common features of our townships today.

Ironically for our area, due to in-migration we have seen the mushrooming of over a hundred informal settlements in our space – thus increasing the demand for housing. These informal settlements are as a result of thousands of South Africans coming from all over the country seeking job opportunities in Ekurhuleni.

In our quest to reverse this situation, last week we hosted a two-day human settlement summit, the purpose of which among others, was to find ways of dealing with the various issues with regards to human settlements in our region. The summit was a major success and lessons learnt from there will come in handy as we continue implementing our Human Settlement Management Plan. Indeed the issue of human settlements is one of the major pressure points for the City of Ekurhuleni because all our people deserve water, sanitation, electricity, refuse removal and a proper transport system.

Let me take this opportunity to thank many of the Councillors who attended this summit – a clear demonstration that we all take human settlement seriously. Thank you very much.

Fellow Councillors; Residents of Ekurhuleni

It is very exciting to share with you the news that the Premier of Gauteng Mr David Makhura has endorsed our strategic trajectory, the Aerotropolis, and our plans to take the city forward. The premier has made it clear that as Gautengers intensify the efforts of building the Gauteng City Region, Ekurhuleni must pioneer the Aerotropolis, Re-Industrialisation and the Building Township Economies. The Premier also encouraged us to come up with two or three major human settlement developments that will redefine the government’s housing delivery programme in pursuit of a new progressive era.

In closing, I wish to invite you all to actively participate in next Saturday’s Liberation Walk in honour of our stalwart Oliver Tambo. Information on what is on offer and how one can get to participate will be made available outside the chamber after the meeting.

Together let us turn Ekurhuleni into a Livable City.

I thank you.